In quick succession, filmmaker Ava DuVernay became the first black woman to win the Sundance Award for Best Directing for “Middle of Nowhere” (2010). Then the first black woman to be nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Director and the Academy Award for Best Picture for “Selma” (2014). That one two-punch meant most doors opened to DuVernay, who would go on to win a Primetime Emmy Award, an NAACP Image Award, a BAFTA Film Award, and a BAFTA TV Award for docs and series like “The 13th” (2016), and “When They See Us” (2019).
READ MORE: Ava DuVernay Says Studios Don’t Offer Her Genre Films Because She’s A Woman
And though she came from indie filmmaking roots and personal stories, for her fourth feature-length effort, DuVernay decided to make 2018’s “A Wrinkle In Time,” a science fantasy adventure film based on Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 novel of the same name starring Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Storm Reid, and more.
The film didn’t do much box office business— only $132.6 Million worldwide off a $100 budget—and it’s arguably almost all but forgotten in her resume of more highly acclaimed films. But on a recent episode of The Team Deakins podcast, DuVernay explained why she chose to do the movie in the first place and why she may never replicate that experience again, i.e., working within the demands of the extensive studio system.
“I wanted to make a studio picture. I wanted to know what that experience was like. Now I know,” DuVernay chuckled diplomatically. “And so [laughs], it was an opportunity to play with a lot more money than I ever played with—it was a $100 million dollar budget—and it was a story that centered [on] a black girl, traveling the universe and saving the world, so there were a lot of elements that I’d never seen before.”
“And I thought, ‘Let me try,’” she continued. “The [studio] had an appetite to try and do it in a different way that was a little bit of a modern approach on the book. It was an experience that was so healthy for me in that I was able to learn—the best experiences are when you learn what you want and learn what you don’t want.”
DuVernay was discreet but candid about it all, clearly not loving the committee process but positive about what she could take with her, learn, and apply to other films.
“And I was able to walk away with that—having worked with a lot of beautiful craftspeople and cast, and to design fantasy costumes and work with VFX in a way that I’d never really had to work with— and understand what that studio system was like And it was a big studio process.”
“And to understand that—short of being some of the most celebrated male auteurs—within that process, you are working as a group, and that is it is a ‘team’ film,” she explained. “And that is something that you have to know. I commend the people that can work in that environment. For me? I enjoy being the author of the film—from there, “When They See Us,” my latest film, “Origin,” and moving more into TV, where I am the primary and final voice became my preference. But I would not have known that had I not had that experience on ‘Wrinkle.’”
DuVernay further explained how things weren’t all a loss; she chose Richard McBride—known for “Gravity” (2013), “The Revenant” (2015) and “Pacific Rim” (2013)— as her VFX supervisor specifically because he created the realistic-looking bear in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Leonardo DiCaprio survival film and wanted to learn how to make VFX seamlessly work with real life.
DuVernay’s latest film “Origin” recently premiered in Venice (read our review), and the filmmaker also explained why the entire movie was shot on 16MM, which also meant she could have no proper playback on set—something that made her highly anxious (though watching dailies for the first time after a day’s shoot was a real treat and process).
As always, it’s a fascinating conversation, but one thing seems pretty clear from it. DuVernay has had her taste and experience of studio filmmaking and will likely stay in the personal and intimate lane for the foreseeable future. That’s probably not a bad thing for fans of her films. Listen below.
